Chemical products such as cleaning compounds are used extensively in many cleaning processes, such as commercial laundering and warewashing. In such applications, one or more laundry or dishwashing machines may require one or more chemical cleaning products to be delivered at different times during their wash cycles. Originally, individual dispensers were used to deliver single chemical products to individual machines. However, because of cost and environmental concerns, dispensing systems have been developed for selectively delivering one or more chemical cleaning products, such as detergent, rinse agents, or softening agents, to a plurality of laundry or warewashing machines.
In prior art dispensing systems of this type, the chemical agents are supplied in concentrated form, such as solid, liquid, granulated, or powdered, and are mixed with a diluent such as water to form use dilutions that are thereafter distributed to each machine as required. Often, the quantity of each chemical agent/dilution delivered must be carefully controlled to ensure optimum cleaning performance. In addition, different use dilutions may need to be separated from one another to prevent incompatible chemical products from reacting with one another. Segregation of use dilutions is typically performed by delivering discrete quantities of diluent between use dilutions to “flush” any residual use dilutions from the system.
Drawbacks of available prior art systems include the need for custom applications for different types of washing systems and for different quantities of washing machines to be serviced by a single chemical delivery system, as well as the difficulty of retrofitting existing washing systems with upgraded chemical delivery control systems.
What is needed, therefore, is a chemical delivery system which is easily adaptable to a number of different washing systems, including both warewashing and laundry systems, as well as to washing systems having varying numbers of washing machines, and in particular, is modular in nature and suited to being retrofitted into existing washing systems.